How I Got a Link from&nbspCNN

This post was promoted from YouMoz. The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.

As my Dad always says, "It's better to be on page 2 in the editorial than on page 7 as an advertisement." This advice has been the guiding principle when it comes to the public relations strategy at Voices.com. In fact, I've proven this to be so effective in public relations that I've applied it to SEO as well. How does the advice translate?

Many SEOs would agree that the organic results are editorial listings, generally obtained by editorial content being linked to by other editorial content, and PPC results are the ads which only appear because someone paid for the ad to show up. This knowledge has led me to experiment with a hybrid approach to public relations and SEO and simply request links from writers, journalists and bloggers when contacted for a comment, which brings me to the highlight of any SEO's week, or perhaps even their month.

This past week, a writer from CNN asked if I'd contribute a few paragraphs on the Amazon Kindle 2's new text-to-speech technology, as it created quite the uproar from the Author's Guild of America. Steve, the writer for CNN, asked for my take and I sent him 2-3 paragraphs with my point of view. A few days later, the article appeared in my Google Alerts and lo and behold, there's a link. Yeah baby!

HOW TO GET THE LINK

Build Relationships

My relationship with Steve started nearly a year ago when he reached out asking if I'd like to contribute to an article called "Internet Gives Voice to Unseen Actors," discussing the rise of freelance voice actors on the web. Naturally, I gladly wrote a few paragraphs and that's how the relationship started, through his invitation and my being willing to help.

Stay Top of Mind

Be professional, respectful and give the relationship time to develop. Keep in touch throughout the year. Send "FYIs" such as interesting facts or breaking news that you have a hunch will catch on in the mainstream. Techmeme is a great source for keeping up with daily news.

Offer an Insider's View

Give writers access to information they wouldn't normally see, such as survey results, internal company metrics (check with your CEO first), or your personal opinion on current and future trends.

Position Yourself as an Industry Expert

I write an annual report that explores areas of the audio production industry that are growing, such as audiobooks for the iPod and Kindle, and I always provide stats and research to back up my claims. This is now the third year that I've written an annual report and it has become a handy tool to send to journalists, partners, vendors and bankers.

Be Accessible

Have a professional email signature that includes your mobile phone and primary email address.

Never Miss a Deadline

When you get the chance to contribute to a news or editorial on a larger website, get your submission in well ahead of the deadline so it makes the cut. If they say Monday, have it in the Friday before as journalists often work on their writing over the weekend and you want to be sure you're included.

Ask for the Link

Shocking, I know. But, unless you ask, you could miss this golden opportunity. I usually say "In closing, I have a small request. I'd really appreciate a link directly to Voices.com. If you can swing it, that would be great!" Consider adding this as a P.S., as if it was an afterthought and not your modus operandi. The lesson here is you'll never know unless you ask.

WRAP UP

Now, the next time you or someone at your company is presented with a press opportunity, you'll know how to leverage it and achieve every SEO's wish, a link from a top tier authority website.

>>> "My relationship with Steve started nearly a year ago when he reached out asking if I'd like to contribute to an article called "Internet Gives Voice to Unseen Actors," discussing the rise of freelance voice actors on the web. "

How were you introduced to Steve. Did he Google for you, did you hunt him out, a conference, kids at same school ...

This seems fine advice about developing a contact but establishing yourself as the go-to person for your industry appears to be the really hard part, no?

I was wondering the same things... also, while I really like the fresh ideas and think the article is quite good, I don't know if I'd consider this a 'strategy' as it's more about being lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.

Not only do you need to have built a trusted relationship with someone at a large news network, but you then have to be lucky enough that an article is published that relates to your skillset and that the relationship you have with the journalist is strong enough for you to be the first person they think of when the article is being written.

If you are lucky enough that all these things happen for you, it's brilliant, but I think a lot of people would struggle to make this all fall into place.

With all due respect, the point of the article was to suggest that developing relationships with members of media, keeping in contact with them throughout the year and finding opportunities to pitch your story is the strategy.

Luck, someone once said is when preparation meets opportunity.

Had I not written the articles, year-in-review style annual reports and understood how mass media works, then I wouldn't have likely been able to capitalize on the opportunity when it was presented.

Just to flesh out this strategy further, I thought I'd share something that may be helpful in seeing how and when I pitch my stories. When I read the news, I do so through the lense of "how does this related to my industry".

Other examples where this strategy has proven well for our company include voice-overs for the iPhone commercials (who is the narrator or announcer of the iPhone commercials), any animated Pixar, Dreamworks or Disney movie (people are interested in who voiced the characters) and technology stories (are robot voices taking over human voices?) .

It's these type of stories I pitch to our media list every month or so.

I still really enjoyed the article and believe that building relationships for all types of linkbuilding is definitely the key to achieving greatest results.

Perhaps a follow-up post with step-by-step instructions on how to contact journalists and how to prepare press-releases that will attract their attention.

There are many great websites and blogs out there which comment on industry trends, provide insightful information on where things may be heading and review things that have happened in the past... however a majority of these would go unnoticed by the broader news community simply because these sites haven't known how to effectively market themselves and get their names out there.

The site might be SEO'd well, and they may have good traffic from a combination of broad and long-tail keywords, but CNN simply don't know they exist.

So I'm not knocking your ideas or saying that your techniques wouldn't work. Nor am I suggesting that building relationships (with the press or anyone, for that matter) isn't a crucial part of link building... I was simply trying to get more of an idea of the steps that need to take place so you can start applying the advice from this post.

How do you first get the attention of CNN to contact YOU instead of the hundreds of other websites within your niche, to allow you to build the relationship in the first place.

I agree with your article. The point of SEM and SEO is not to cater to search engines, but to readers, to people. Sites and pages, much like the written word wherever it appears, are optimized in such a way that relevant, timely information is delivered to people when and where they want it in a non obtrusive way. Relationships, on or offline, are what grease the wheel of humanity.

Fantastic! You know what I can add to this, if you like a product or a feature that belongs to a big company, write a clever article in praise of it and post it on your website. A marketing person is sure to bump into it if it's prominent enough and might quote it on their website as a testimonial, quote or even publish it entirely. This happened to me when Sony Playstation linked back to my site thanks to my reviews of The Mountain and Double Life ads.

Steve from CNN had reached out to me initially. I'd like to think it's because of my previous efforts in writing annual reports, sharing industry statistics on my blog and speaking at conferences -- all of which have created a presence on Google.

In all likelyhood, he Googled industry-related terms and my name came up a few times.

Just like Danny Sullivan is often quoted as the search engine expert by New York Times, every industry has their go-to-guy/gal.

If the industry you're working in only has a few bloggers, it's a prime chance to leverage that into becoming a "thought leader" within your field.

I love your note about not only being on time for deadlines but being early. I used to do journalism and having this trait will get you on journalist's good sides and KEEP you there- they'll come to you first, because everyone else waits till the last minute ant that pushes their deadline back. Plus, if one of their 'regulars' fails your quick response time has positioned you as a last-minute fill in that can open you up to regular placement and referrals.

The BBC recently made a statement to say that they are beginning an "aggressive" out-bound linking campaign. Apparently the decision to do so was motivated by the fact that in the UK, of the top 10 most visited websites, the BBC website is the only one that is actually a UK run site. They therefore want to change things.

Great advice! Shows how valuable making these type of contacts really is. In this case it's not so much what you know, as who you know. You would have to be at the top of the industry to achieve such things.

Ah...if only all those people sending automated junk link requests could read this...perhaps i fthey put all that wasted effort into following these great guidelines then they may indeed get a link instead of wearing out my delete key...

Thanks for the insightful article. Glad that you landed such a great link and appreciate the time you took to share the details of it. It seems to me like a result of the time and effort you put in to creating the high quality content and reports, which just goes to show what everyone says, content is still king!

I think it's wise to have a little bullet point list of things to do when the media come calling, your list nails it pretty good.

I had a similar instance last year with the Financial Times wanting opinion on uptake of websites amongst IFA's. After speaking with the journalist on the phone, I later added them on LinkedIn in order to keep in touch with them.

Thanks again for the interesting article, it's always nice to have things refreshed and the important points reiterated.

I am going to include these in the list of things to look towards developing in the future. The article certainly provides a lot of room for ideas to develop in terms of baiting reporters to come after you.

Nice post - they're great links if you can get them! I've found that some news outlets are EPIC FAIL at linking out though. Check out this bizarre article from the Telegraph which doesn't link out to Will at all, then links to someone random at the end:

He didn't link out to that guy either. He just bolded it. In any case, you're right - major news outlets are notoriously greedy linking out to others. I think they view it as similar to encouraging you to change channels. Very irritating as a reader to have to go Hunting for Good Will - instead of having a link right there.

Just out of curiosity, I wonder if Will had asked him to link as a courtesy, if he would do it.